


Dante's Muse at Cadillac Jack's

by Storycat9



Category: Lucifer (TV), The Booth at the End
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Booth at the End Between Seasons 1 & 2, Emotional Hurt, Identity, Post-Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26484079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storycat9/pseuds/Storycat9
Summary: The Man travels, makes deals, moves on. He doesn't realize someone's been tracking him, all the way to a run-down Los Angeles diner.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, The Man (Booth at the End) & Doris
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	Dante's Muse at Cadillac Jack's

The dark-haired woman enters Cadillac Jack’s diner cautiously, when the Man has his head down, making notes in the little leather-bound journal on his lap. She doesn’t try to approach, but sits at the far end of the counter instead, half hidden by the cash register. 

She orders a cup of coffee and a ham and cheese omelet from the waitress with kind, tired eyes and props her tablet on the counter to pretend to work. She sneaks glances at the Man in the booth at the end as he writes and sips from a pot of tea.

It was hard, so hard, to find this Man. She’s been tracking the whispers for years now--a Man who gives favors, a Man who sits and listens to what people truly desire and sometimes makes a deal for them to get it, even as he tells them he has done nothing at all. 

The Man was at a dive bar in Las Vegas six years ago, and she just barely missed catching up with him there. Despite decades of training--practically being raised to hunt people who don’t want to be found--she couldn’t find hide nor hair of him for most of a year after that.

Even when she caught the rumors that he had set up shop in Los Angeles again, she probably wouldn’t have found this diner in time if she hadn’t remembered coming here with her family years ago. She remembers Mom laughing as her partner kissed away a dollop of whipped cream from the corner of her mouth before stealing the rest of her apple pie. 

She misses her mother’s laugh.

* * *

The Man hasn’t noticed her, and so she watches him. His face is older, a little scruffy but strangely compelling, and his white-blonde hair looks like he drags his hands through it and pulls often. He says very little, mostly listening to the people who troop in and out of the diner pretty much all day to talk to him. Some are angry, some excited, some scared--all a little desperate. She can read his thoughts about them in the line of the Man’s mouth: now disgusted or determined, sympathetic, stern, even quietly horrified. A few of them thank him, and she sees the guarded surprise in his face. 

She recognizes that expression.

“You need a top-off, honey?” asks the waitress, “Doris,” according to her name tag. Doris has a long blond ponytail and shrewd eyes, and follows the woman’s gaze to the Man, then back. 

Doris says nothing, and the dark-haired woman forces a smile at her and murmurs thanks for the coffee refill. She watches Doris return to the carafes and lift one with hot water before carrying it over to the Man and refilling his tea pot. She says something low, and the Man finally raises his eyes briefly. Something slides across his face, as though he’s trying to place her, before he turns back to the man across from him.

The woman waits until the man’s latest companion--an older Asian man, nearly weeping in gratitude-- leaves, and the Man looks like he might pack up, too. He calls Doris over, motions for the check, but the woman beats him to it. She walks up as the waitress lays the bill down, and lays her own hand over it. 

“I hear they serve a great pastrami sandwich here,” she says, sliding into the seat across from the Man and adding, “Me, I’m more of a ham-and-egg on Hawaiian bread kind of girl.”

The man’s face twitches for a moment; she can see a flash of something in his eyes before it’s shoved down and under. He tilts a hand to her. “Order whatever you like. I don’t believe you have an appointment, Miss …?”

“I hear you’re the man who can get people what they desire,” she says, ignoring the Man’s unstated question. 

“I present people with opportunities to get things for themselves,” he replies. “Is there something you want?”

Now that she is close, she can see things hiding below his surface: the little marks of grief around the Man’s mouth and the faint memory of smile lines at the corners of his eyes. She hadn’t been sure of him, after hearing his former clients describe him, but she’s sure now.

“I want to find a friend of mine who got lost.”

The Man looks at her with polite professional interest in his blue eyes but does not yet pull out his pen. 

“I’m not the missing person’s bureau,” he says. “Have you tried calling the police?”

The woman laughs. “If the police could have found him, he’d have been found decades ago.”

“Interesting that you are still looking after so long. A childhood friend?” The Man asks sympathetically.

The woman flashes an impish grin that makes her look much younger.

“My mom’s old work partner, actually,” she tells the Man. “He liked to make deals too, actually, only his deals tended to involve helping me pay back bullies at school and trading me chocolate cake for intel on my mom.” 

The Man makes a noncommittal sound and drums his long elegant fingers over the book. The woman presses on. 

“I mean, I’m pretty sure he worshiped the ground my mother walked on, you know? … He used to sing me to sleep with lullabies in dozens of different languages. I remember the time he was with us as the happiest in my mother’s life.”

The Man reaches for his cup of tea and takes a sip, puts it back with trembling precision. “And what do you mean when you say this person got lost?” he asks. 

“He disappeared. My mom said he had an emergency. I’m not sure what she really knew; I know she never stopped trying to find him, but she wouldn’t talk to me about it.”

The woman leans forward with her arms flat on the table, her fingertips nearly brushing his book. The Man covers it with both hands. “That doesn’t sound like he got lost; it sounds like he left you and your mother.”

The woman catches, out of the corner of her eye, that the waitress is listening as hard as she can without moving from her station. Doris can’t tell what’s going on, but she senses tension.

“He would never have left if he didn’t have to,” the woman says flatly, her tone brooking no argument. 

“Have you considered your friend may be dead?” the Man asks gently.

“It wouldn’t matter if he was, right? You can make a deal for anything, I’ve heard,” she says. 

She gives the Man a knife-edged smile--her aunt’s smile, had she been able to see it--and goes on, “but no, I think he’s alive. My mother was killed in the line of duty about five years after he left, and he showed up at her house on the day of her funeral. He had dust in his hair and he looked pretty wrecked, you know? But he also looked just the same as the last time I’d seen him. He pulled me into his arms on the porch and hugged me, and we were both crying. But when I pulled back and turned to let him into the house, he just … disappeared. That was 26 years ago.”

A fine tremor runs through the Man.

* * *

“I’m not sure I understand why you would want to find someone who abandoned you, forgot about you,” he says. “What do you imagine happening if you find this person?”

The woman looks at the Man, realizes that his blue eyes in this moment are the precise color of her mother’s eyes; his cadence mirrors one that used to talk down suspects with guns and tantruming teenagers with equal calm. For a moment bitterness rises like bile in her throat; she wants to point a finger at him and yell,  _ Thief! Thief! That’s not yours, you cowardly bastard. You have no right! _

But she is her mother’s daughter, and she knows what her mother wanted.

“I don’t think he forgot me,” she says. “I think he tried to forget himself. I think he didn’t believe he could be happy or good without my mom, or even that he  _ should  _ ever be happy or good without her, even though I know my mom wanted that so much for him. I want to find him, and remind him. I want to make sure he lets himself be happy again.”

The Man leans back and studies her for several minutes, his hands steepled together over his book. She watches him fight a realization, a voice in his mind.

“Isn’t this the part where you open your book and give me a task?” the woman prods.

The Man cuts an almost petulant look to her, sliding his book away. “I can’t make a deal without a name.”

She leans forward and covers his hands with her own, moving them back to the book.

“Are you going to tell me you don’t know my name? I know you don’t lie,” she returns. “Now open the book and tell me what I have to do next.”

The Man shakes his head but can say nothing. He passes a suddenly exhausted hand over his face and opens the book. He reads what’s written there and his face goes grey. 

“I can’t help you,” he says, closing the book abruptly. His normally warm, even voice jumps an octave higher, unstrung. “I’m sorry, no deal.”

The Man sweeps his book and jacket under one arm and throws bills onto the table as he stands. The woman grabs at his sleeve. “Wait, please! L--”

“No.  _ No _ ,” he cuts in. His voice clicks in the back of his throat as he forces out the words. “Don’t ask for this. The person you are looking for is … unrecoverable.”

The Man pulls away and leaves the cafe. The dark-haired woman watches him cross the street in long strides, a step away from running. She can’t seem to move. 

A carafe passes in front of her, coffee pouring into a cup. The woman looks up to find the waitress looking down at her with soft amazement.

“He’s been coming here six weeks and I’ve never seen him run away from a deal,” Doris says. “After that, I think I’d be surprised if he ever came back again.”

The dark-haired woman looks up at Doris. She takes in the waitress’s long blond ponytail and the strong line of her jaw, remembers the way the Man tipped his tea pot open for more water as the waitress came by, and the puzzled half-smile that had touched his mouth for a moment.

“I think you’re right,” she says. “I think he’ll run again, and I think he’ll watch for me on his trail from now on. He might change what he looks like … though I think he won’t, for a while at least. Doris, would you follow, if I told you how to find him? Would you try to--?”

“Help him?” Doris sits down in the seat the Man just left, and nods. Her dark eyes gleam.

The dark-haired woman smiles, holds out her hand. “My name is Beatrice. Let me tell you a story. And then let’s make a deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled upon Booth at the End long after I started watching Lucifer, and while the tone of the two shows is totally different, some of the Man's comments and mannerisms seemed very familiar. I started wondering what could possibly happen to turn a flippant, debonair, chatterbox Devil into someone so quietly exhausted and despairing--someone who still shows glints of fascination with humanity, but so much more resigned to his role. This is what came out of it.
> 
> By the way, did you know Beatrice, the guiding muse in Dante's famous biblical trilogy, comes from a Latin name meaning, "she who brings happiness"?


End file.
